Architectural Drawing: Exercise 3 and 4 - The Staircase

Welcome to Architectural Drawing. In this series, I share what I have learned in regards to drawing in my Intro To Architecture class.

During the second week of class, the architecture students were assigned two exercises. The first one, Exercise Three, focused on the ability to use different pencil types and line strokes effectively, while copying what you saw on paper. The picture above features two tree representations. The left tree is the example. The right tree is my hand-drawn copy. Since Exercise Three was very brief, I'll be skipping it and covering Exercise Four for this post.

Exercise Four required us to find a specific staircase on campus, take measurements of any pertinent information, and draw both a plan and section view...all freehand.

The Plan and Section

Both plan and section drawings are essential for communicating information about the structure. Specifically: measurements.

Plan drawings are the top-down aerial view of the structure, except you do not see the roof of the building. The roof is sliced away so that you can see the insides of the structure from above. It allows for a perspective never truly seen by any user of the space. 

Section drawings, on the other hand, are side views of the structure, but there's a caveat similar to the plan drawings. They are not just side views. Section drawings show what the structure would look like when a section of it has been sliced away. This allows for a more in-depth look at the space. Think of section drawings as first looking at the front of a loaf of bread, and then slicing that loaf of bread to reveal what lies behind the facade.

Both plan and section drawings are two-dimensional representations of reality, and when they are done correctly and clearly, they are extremely helpful for those building the structure.

The Staircase

After trying to measure a much more complicated staircase, I decided to choose the one above. This one was very simple. Once I was at the site, I pulled out my tape measure and began to record information. I had to measure almost everything that you see in the picture. After I finished the measurements, which I completed in two separate days, I was able to start the drawings on the grid paper. The result of all my measurements is below.

Section Drawing

In both plan and section drawings, the point at which the structure is sliced has to be shaded. The official term for this is called poche. In the section drawing above, you can see that I shaded both the staircase and the brick underneath. This signifies where the hypothetical "knife" sliced the structure. That's why you don't see the bush or the basement staircase railings as you see in the real picture. 

Furthermore, the type of materials used in the structure must be shown. To do this, one can draw basic symbols. For example, to show that the walls were made out of brick, I drew groups of brick symbols. On the other hand, concrete is shown by groups of dots.

Plan Drawing

When one is using a section view, it is very helpful to have a plan view along with it. Plan views compliment the section view, providing details the section view cannot see. In my plan, I drew what's called a "section cut line" to signify where the structure has been cut in the section view. This can be seen as the long line with two triangles on either end.

Notice what I did wrong in the plan view. You can see it marked on the top left of the plan. The thick brick wall you see is the wall of the building behind the staircase. Since the structure will be sliced through when looking down at it, this brick wall needed to be shaded.

Overall, the end result of these two drawings, put together, provided an accurate depiction of the size, texture, and proportions of the staircase.

References:

>> Architectural Drawing: Exercise 2 - Mindbenders

Today's ArchiPic #117

Today's ArchiPic is the Chapel of St. Ignatius, designed by Steven Holl Architects. Steven Holl is a multi-award winning architect based out of New York, who has built structures across the globe. His design philosophy is based off of phenomenology, that the style and shape of the building should be determined by the site of construction rather than the building determining the style of the site.

Finished in 1997 and located at Seattle University in Washington state, the chapel is the hallmark structure for the university. The form started out as a simple box, but Holl added seven “bottles” of light onto the top, each in a different direction. Lighting is an important aspect of the chapel, with each separate "bottle" relating to the different areas and types of worship in the Jesuit congregation. The chapel won the National AIA Religious Architecture Award in 1997.

Since one of my assignments had me write a short biography on Holl, you'll be seeing this building, along with some of his other works, in an upcoming post.

Coincidentally, Today's ArchiPic #88 featured a building designed by Steven Holl as well.

References:
>> http://www.stevenholl.com/projects/st-ignatius-chapel

Architectural Drawing: Exercise 2 - Mindbenders

As I said in my first post over architectural lettering, lettering is not the only thing that makes up the "backbone" of architecture. Drawing is the second part of this backbone.

An isometric drawing, which includes top, front, and side views.

Drawing in architecture requires you to translate two-dimensional information into three-dimensions, and three-dimensional information into two-dimensions. During our first week, we completed two assignments: one on architectural lettering and the second one on translating 2D info into 3D on paper, which is the subject of this post. This requires a good understanding of how perspective works. Some people are naturally gifted at manipulating 3D objects in their minds. For others, it takes practice to fine tune this ability.

I truly believe my time playing Minecraft helped me with understanding and visualizing a space in three-dimensions, but it did not prepare me for translating 2D info into a 3D drawing.

For this assignment, we were given three 2D drawings (top, front, and side views of a simple cube) and had to translate this information into an isometric paraline drawing, like the middle cube seen below.

The key to succeeding on this assignment is to first draw a basic cube and temporarily ignore the 2D info on the left. After drawing the cube, you can start "cutting" the pieces out by adding the relevant lines. But how does one draw a perfect cube like this? It is actually very simple. All you need is a protractor for the angles and a ruler for the straight lines. For my cubes, I chose a 30 degree perspective. And for the length of the lines, I chose 1 inch. Each line has to be the same length to create a perfect cube.

After lightly drawing the frame of the cube, you can begin to translate the 2D information. However, there are lines you have to add yourself that are not shown in the 2D views.

For instance, take a look at cube 2 below.

Cube 2

Even though I was given the information for the right diagonal, highlighted in blue, I was not given information for the left diagonal, highlighted in red. This is where spatial awareness comes in to play. Based on the 2D side view, you must understand that this cube had its top left side sliced off, creating a cube with a slope on one side. To complete the drawing correctly, the red diagonal must be drawn.

Before we move on, take note of the degree marking on cube 2. If this was 45 degrees, the cube would look like the axonometric drawing in the picture shown earlier. On the other hand, if the degree was 15, the perspective would be lower to the ground, and we would see more of the front and less of the top, as seen in the perspective drawing.

Cube 3

Cube 3 was very tricky. Dashed lines indicate lines you could only see if you had x-ray vision. The dashed lines on this front view indicate that there is a wall blocking these lines. The top and side views are fairly simple, yet the front view provides the most important information.

We know this cube has been cut in half and made into a triangular prism. The top and side views tell us that a small square has been cut out. The front view, with the dashed lines, tells us that there is a wall on the front blocking the view of the small square.

With that information, we can construct this:

Cubes 4-11

Here are the rest of the cubes. Many of them were quite difficult in the sense that it took some critical thinking to figure them out, but the assignment did not take long. (Cube 1 was an example provided by the assignment.)

And here's a wider shot of the entire three page assignment.

Talk about mind-benders. Did I know what each cube was going to look like? No. But once I started drawing the relevant lines, it began to make sense.

What I quickly learned was this: 

- Draw the basic cube first. 

- Then cut the pieces out. 

This cube assignment would turn out to be very important. In fact, it has helped me complete multiple assignments through an understanding of how paraline drawing works, which we'll take a look at in upcoming posts.

References:

>> Architectural Drawing: Exercise 1 - A Tale of Skydiving

>> Why architecture?